There are five key ingredients in building a continental empire. A strongcontinental empire must be able to up-hold these five key things to survive. These five allimportant things are a strong central government; foreign policy, to deal with othercountries; manifest destiny, to deal with matters of land; infrastructure, which deals withstate business, transportation, and financial matters; and the ability to solve internalproblems such as social, economic, and political problems.
America is a continentalempire and runs itself using these five things. The most important of these is probably thestrong central government. A strong central government insures that the government willbe able to run smoothly in a time of crisis and have the capability to make sound decisionsthat will benefit the American populace. Foreign policy was developed so that Americawould know where it stood when it came to dealing with other countries. It wasimportant that America dealt with international problems in a uniform manner.
Manifestdestiny deals with the issue of how America and Americans will acquire land. Infrastructure is America working together. America depends on many things to keep itrunning, when these things cross paths we develop an infrastructure. America must solveinternal problems all of the time. What these problems are and how we solve them is whatshapes America.
America slowly began to build a continental empire. In order to achieve the five things needed to create a continental empire Americahad to start slow. They first had to gain the trust of their people and settle the differencesbetween them. This trust was partly gained by heroes of the Revolutionary War becomingpoliticians. An example of this was George Washington. He led troops into battle duringthe war and then became president.
American people found it very difficult to start arebellion or disagree with someone that had led them to victory against Britain. WithGeorge at the helm of America we were well on our way to developing a continentalempire. This trust in America was secured by actions. Our government kept making thepeople happy by writing a bill of rights and a constitution that gave Americans thefreedom that they had wanted when they went to war with Britain. The people wantedrights that they felt were fair and necessary to their existence. The government outlinedthese rights in the Bill of Rights.
The people agreed with them. The constitution outlinedrules to form a more perfect Union. Americans excepted the contents of the Constitutionand began to build their lives around it. With this a continental empire was developed,now all they had to do was keep it running. America had built a continental empire when it broke away from the rule of Britainin the late 1700’s and the early 1800’s. As America moved into the mid 1800’s it had tokeep its continental empire alive.
To keep it alive America continued to make wisedecisions that kept Americans happy. There were a lot of compromises between thegovernment and its people. These compromises kept both parties happy. One of thesecompromises was the Compromise of 1850. The issue of whether the new states wouldbe slave or free states arose.
To solve this problem Henry Clay developed a plan that mademost everyone happy. His plan was to admit California as a free state, to give popularsovereignty to Utah and New Mexico, and allow slavery but not slave trade to exist inTexas. This compromise did not sit well with extreme abolitionists or extreme southernersbut made most everyone else happy. In the early times of the continental empire it wasimportant to keep everyone believing in America.
To reestablish that Lincoln wrote theGettysburg Address. It restated what Americans believed in and got them fired up fortheir country. The Gettysburg Address fueled America’s continental empire. The UnitedStates was running smoothly on all fronts except that of slavery. Slavery nearly split America into two separate countries. Had the South won theywould have seceded from the Union and continued to practice slavery on their half of thecontinent.
The North did not want the South to secede from the Union. At first they triedto solve the problem peacefully but they ended up going to war over it. The North wonthe Civil War and slavery was abolished. America also got to stay together as a wholecountry. The continental empire was preserved throughout the mid 1800’s.America’s
